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text provided below and via Dictionary.com.
O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last
gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the
perilous fight
O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly
streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting
in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was
still there,
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the
brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the
deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence
reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering
steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half
discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first
beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the
stream,
’Tis the star-spangled banner—O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the
brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s
pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the
grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth
wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the
brave.
O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s
desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n
rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us
a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall
wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the
brave.
-
Francis Scott Key, 1814
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